Exercise 6&7

Exercise 6 Literacy Sponsor List

After reading about sponsors of literacy in Deborah Brandt’s essay, “Sponsors of Literacy,” (pages 68-98) take some time to think about your own literacy sponsors. Spend at least 15 minutes writing down every literacy sponsor from your own life that you can think of. These might be people, institutions, organizations, governments, programs, events, communities, clubs, websites, and more. These sponsors may have had positive or negative effects on your literacy development. They may have acted as providers, withholders, supporters, deniers, coaches, encouragers, and/or discouragers of literacy. 

After creating your list, modify it by highlighting at least ten of the more interesting or significant items on your list. Below your list, write about your selected sponsors. Provide your reason(s) for highlighting your chosen sponsors and briefly describe how each of these agents have acted as sponsors of literacy in your life. You might indicate what kind of relationship these sponsors have had with your literacy. That is, did this sponsor have a positive, negative, or mixed effect on your literacy? Did their sponsorship involve encouragement, support, withholding, or other actions? Write about 2-4 sentences for each of your chosen sponsors. 

TL;DR: List your literacy sponsors for at least 15 minutes. Then choose ten and explain more about them, including why they are significant and what kind of relationship they have had with you and your literacy (2-4 sentences per highlighted sponsor). 

Rubric: 

A successful response to this assignment will include the following traits: 

• It contains a thorough list of literacy sponsors. This means it will probably feature at least 20, and even up to several dozen, literacy sponsors. Highlight, embolden, or underline 10 of these sponsors in the list. (5 points) 


• Two to four sentences for each of your highlighted sponsors, explaining their significance and roles as sponsors.  (10 points) 

Exercise 7: literacy sponsor infographic 

Make an infographic or chart that shows a detailed subset of your literacy sponsors. You have two options for this assignment: 

Option 1: Make an infographic based on a web of your ten highlighted sponsors from the previous assignment (“Literacy Sponsor List”). 

Option 2: Make an infographic based on a web of the literacy sponsors that have played a role in leading you to this course. 

You will need to choose how to represent their interactions with one another and/or with you. Will you use line types and/or colors to represent various interactions (for example, positive, negative, encouraging, supportive, monetary, withholding, “misappropriation,” “competition,” etc.)? Will you use shapes, colors, symbols, or other stylizations to indicate whether the sponsor is a person, institution, event, etc.? Will you present the information in a largely chronological order, or will you choose another method of arranging your sponsors of literacy? 

Finally, include text, either throughout your chart or in one place, that briefly comments on the values, ideas, skills, and/or experiences you have gained from, or otherwise modified because of, your various sponsors. 

Rubric: 

A successful infographic will include the following traits: 

• It is clearly and consistently labeled. (4 points) 


• It has an organizational structure that is easy to understand. (4 points) 


• It includes explanations of your sponsors and their interactions with you and other sponsors. (7 points)